Sunny looked at the talent description of his newest talent through his God's eyes.

[Talent Name: Chosen One of the Void]

[Grade: SSS]

[Description: You are the Chosen One. The Void resonates with you.

You are Below One and Above All.

Only the Creator of Everything, the Void Master, stands above you in the cosmic hierarchy. All others are beneath.

No mortal, regardless of power level or artifacts, can inflict harm upon your divine form.

Demigod Resistance: 99% of all force, magic, or damage from a demigod is nullified.

Faith Resistance: 70% of all damage from a God of Faith is nullified.

Law Resistance: 50% of all damage from a God of Laws is nullified.

Void Resistance: 30% of all damage from a Void-Born entity is nullified.

Your attacks, skills, and commands gain exponential potency proportional to the difference in hierarchy between you and the target.]

"W-what…?" Sunny stammered, his voice a whisper that echoed in the silent palace.

He read the description again, his mind racing to comprehend the absurdity of what he was seeing. This talent didn't just make him strong; it made him a fortress.

'A 70% damage reduction from Gods of Faith?' he thought, his heart hammering against his ribs. 'That means the entire Pantheon, all six billion of my subordinates, could launch a coordinated strike against me, and it woudn't even leave a scratch'

But it was the final line of defense that truly made his blood sing. '30% resistance against Void-Born.'

The Demon Lords were Void-Born. The Void Beasts were Void-Born. Even Adam was Void-Born.

Against the terrifying entities that had haunted his nightmares; Deimos, Ichor, Maledictus... he now possessed a shield that decreased their power by nearly a third.

Combined with the Absolute Defense from Nova, his Resilience from Adam that he will be copying in future, and his own Divine Immortality, he was becoming an entity that simply refused to die.

With this revelation, the cosmic hierarchy finally crystallized in his mind, a ladder of power stretching into infinity.

At the very peak, unseen and unknowable, sat the Void Master, King Zero.

Just below him, alone in his unique tier, stood Sunny, the Chosen One, the Anomaly.

Below him were the Void-Born; Adam, the Demon Lords, the Royal Void Beasts.

Then came the Gods of Law, the masters of concepts.

And finally, at the bottom of the divine food chain, the Gods of Faith.

'Doesn't that mean… I am above them all? At least in this bubble of reality?' Sunny mused.

But he quickly tempered his arrogance. Being higher on the ladder didn't mean he couldn't be pulled down.

A king could still be killed by a peasant if the peasant had a sharp enough knife. Hierarchy was authority, but strength was absolute. He needed to back up his rank with power.

"I think a storm is approaching," Sunny whispered to the empty air of his palace, a premonition of the battles to come settling over him.

But just as he prepared to stand, a sudden, familiar, and terrifying sensation seized his body.

It wasn't an attack. It was a hunger. A bottomless void opening up in the center of his very being.

He froze. 'Not here. Not now.'

He was in the heart of the City of Gods. If he lost control here, if he began to absorb mana to fuel this sudden urge, he would drain the city dry.

The lights would fail, the shields would drop, and the six billion Gods celebrating outside would be sucked dry of their energy.

With a desperate wave of his hand, Sunny warped reality. His body vanished from the palace and reappeared instantly in a high-security isolation realm deep within his subspace.

It was a pocket dimension he had designed for exactly this purpose. A white room cut off from the outside world, where no energy could enter or exit without his direct command.

He collapsed into a cross-legged position, his breathing ragged. "Thea!" he said mentally. "Manifest mana! Now! As fast as you can!"

The air in the white room instantly grew heavy. Thea, hearing her master's order, poured faith points into the manifestation process.

Blue motes of light appeared, swirling into a thick, rich fog of pure magical energy.

Sunny opened his mouth and inhaled.

He didn't breathe the mana; he devoured it. The rich fog of mana rushed into him, swirling into his core, fueling a transformation that was tearing him apart from the inside out.

It wasn't enough.

'This is bad,' Thea analyzed, her consciousness racing. 'Master's absorption rate has increased by many times since his last breakthrough. The current output is insufficient. If this continues, he will destabilize the entire multiverse. He will cause a calamity.'

She made a split-second decision. She stopped manifesting mana.

Instead, she focused on herself.

All across the white room, Thea's particles began to replicate.

One became two. Two became four. Millions became billions.

In seconds, the white room was filled not just with mana, but with her. Billions of Thea-particles formed a shimmering, silver cloud around Sunny.

'Now,' Thea commanded herself.

Every single particle simultaneously activated the Manifestation ability.

The trickle of mana became a flood. A tsunami of blue energy crashed over Sunny.

It was a concentration of magic so dense it would have crushed a mortal mage instantly. But Sunny was no mortal. He drank it in, his body glowing with an intense, blinding light.

'Master,' Thea thought, watching the impossible, 'how can you be breaking through again so soon? It has been mere days since you reached S-Grade.'

Sunny didn't hear her. He was lost in the trance of ascension. He had no knowledge of the outside world, no awareness of the panic he had caused Thea. He only knew the hunger, and the fire that was refining his very soul.

Time lost its meaning. Minutes stretched into hours. Thea poured oceans of mana into him, enough energy to birth a star, and he consumed it all.

Finally, after four agonizing Godly hours, the storm broke.

BOOM.

A silent shockwave rippled through the isolation realm. The mana fog dispersed, blown away by the sheer pressure radiating from Sunny's body.

He opened his eyes and stood up, and the space around him groaned. A simple flex of his fingers caused cracks to appear in the fabric of the dimension.

"Hah…" Sunny exhaled, a breath of pure power. "What a… strange feeling."

It wasn't just an increase in capacity. It was a change in quality. The mana inside him felt heavier, denser. It felt like he had replaced the blood in his veins with liquid mercury.

[Congratulations, Master. You have successfully broken through to SS-Grade Mage.]

Thea's voice sounded exhausted. She heaved a sigh of relief.

"Good work, Thea," Sunny said, stretching his arms. He felt incredible.

"You should be free for a few days now. I don't think breaking through to SSS-Grade will be this easy. The requirements will likely be astronomical."

He needed to test this new power. He needed to know if his rank finally matched his status.

With a casual swipe of his hand, he tore open a rift in the isolation realm, peering directly into the crushing darkness of the Void.

He raised a finger. He simply condensed his new SS-Grade strength into a single, dense bullet of pure energy and fired.

Bang.

The magic bullet shot into the Void. Last time, when he was merely S-Grade, his magic had dissolved after a billion kilometers, eaten away by the Void's corrosive nothingness.

But this time was different.

He watched through his God's Eye. The bullet pierced the darkness like a comet. It passed the billion-kilometer mark without flickering. It crossed a trillion kilometers. Ten trillion.

It kept going, a defiant spark of existence in the nothingness.

"Is it because my mana is denser?" Sunny mused, watching the distant speck of light. "Or is it because of the new talent? Chosen One of the Void… perhaps the Void simply refuses to eat its own chosen one."

He smiled, satisfied. He closed the tear, sealing away the darkness, and stepped out of the isolation realm.

He reappeared in his throne room, the familiar grandeur of the palace a welcome sight.

He walked toward his throne, intending to finally take a nap. He had earned it.

He had managed an empire, fought a war, built a city, and ascended to a higher plane of existence, all in just 12 hours.

"A nap," he whispered. "Just for a few hours."

He sat down. He closed his eyes.

Bzzt.

His body buzzed. Not with the hum of mana this time, but with a deep, physical vibration in his bones.

His muscles twitched, spasming with a sudden, intense heat. His skin felt tight, as if something inside was trying to burst out.

Sunny's eyes snapped open. He looked down at his hands, which were trembling uncontrollably.

"You have got to be kidding me," he groaned, looking up at the ceiling of his palace. "Am I cursed? Is that it? How can I be having another breakthrough?"

His clones, laboring away in the time-accelerated God-Maker realm for centuries, had not just been studying magic.

Three of them had been relentlessly refining their bodies. And now, that shared progress, was returning back into his main body.

He was breaking through, and becoming a SS-Grade Body Refiner.

"Haha," Sunny laughed, a sound bordering on hysteria. He stood up, abandoning the throne he hadn't even warmed. "No rest for the wicked. Or the chosen."

He waved his hand, reopening the portal to the isolation realm. He had to go back. He had to feed the hunger again.

As he stepped through, he sent a mental apology to Thea.

'Get ready, Thea. Round two is starting.'

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